Friday, August 31, 2012

Technical Approach

The initial decision was to focus on developing a native iOS app for the iPad, as this provided the greatest opportunity for effectively communicating the existing Learnmore content.

A major element of the original Learnmore website was a set
of audio slideshows in Adobe Presenter format. However, this was a major
challenge for the project. Our primary goal for this content was to produce a
long-term, sustainable format that provided support for both online and mobile
delivery. To this end, we adopted a combination of XML and SMIL to represent
for the audio slideshows.

User studies were originally planned to involve payment to
participants. However, a combination of factors rendered that approach
redundant. Some evaluation required relatively assessing relatively generic
interface design issues, that enabled us to draw on a panel of users who
regularly participate in usability studies, and this relieved us of the
pressure of finding law students specifically for those purposes.

Furthermore, a number of items of contextual information
became available to us early in the project from other studies that were being
undertaken with law students specifically, and from associated MSc projects
that were examining the actual contexts of use of mobile devices. This enabled
us to focus, again, on the specific interaction design of the app, and to
either eliminate or reduce our time spent on other projects.

Bi-weekly reviews of the design were undertaken with the law
library and law school stakeholders, and weekly evaluations were performed on
the interaction designs, following the methods of Steve Krug.

The development cycle itself followed an iterative process,
driven by these usability evaluations, as planned.

From weeks 7 to 10, two main designs were
iterated and adapted while the development of the common codebase was completed. By the end of week 10, an initial slideshow method
was complete, two potential information architecture structures were specified
in detail and the two interface designs partially implemented. A major review
at this point, including all current usability data and input from the
stakeholders was undertaken, resulting in the initial selection of both
information architecture and interaction design.

However, the issue of the visual appearance of the chosen
interface remained a major concern, as there was a tension between fidelity to
the existing website on one hand and providing a user experience that was
consistent with the iPad on the other. Learnmore’s online style appearance is
very driven by informally style pencil drawings, and this was incongruous in
the context of the relatively industrial appearance of the iPad interface. As
Learnmore’s success is driven by both its informal style regarding both content
and appearance, it was important to resolve this apparently superficial issue,
or the nature of the collection would be lost.

A weekly development cycle was continued up to week 16, by
which time the core function of the system was nearing completion. The issues
of content tailoring to the iPad context were also mostly resolved. All text
was placed in HTML format, as this was displayed rapidly and could be navigated
smoothly, whereas PDF content, while richer, suffered from lagging response
times to user selection and navigation, which proved to undermine user
satisfaction. The issue of style was almost resolved by this point, by
combining an irreverent use of photographic images – matching the style if not
form of Learnmore online – with a traditional iOS styling to the interface.

The overall interaction design relies extensively on swiping
and scrolling, whenever possible, and minimising the use of buttons. This
provides a highly tailored user experience that exploits the touch-based
interaction of tablet/slate PCs, and maximises the space available to display
the content to the user. A consistent pattern of navigation was achieved by
this point for both the slideshow content and written content – sideways swipes
navigating the user between either slides or pages.